The Samsung Galaxy S9, S9 Plus, and the Galaxy Note 9 were the company’s 2018 flagship smartphones, and the three devices are still poised to receive security updates. While the Korean OEM has committed to deliver up to 3 generations of Android OS updates, the policy only applies to flagship models from the Galaxy S10 onward. As a result, both the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9 are officially stuck with Android 10. Thankfully, these devices still have quite the aftermarket development support on our forums, and a developer has now released the first set of official builds of the ArrowOS custom ROM based on Android 12 for them.

XDA Forums: Samsung Galaxy S9 ||| Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus ||| Samsung Galaxy Note 9

The release comes to us courtesy of XDA Senior Member king1990 (as well as the entire ArrowOS team), and it offers users of these fan-favorite devices a chance to try out the latest Android version available right now. The working feature list for the ROM includes most of the key functionalities like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RIL, audio and video playback, and more. But because of its early nature, a few key aspects like device encryption and Wi-Fi Casting are disabled for now. There are also some known incompatibility issues between AOSP and Samsung's proprietary implementation of advanced LTE services, because of which VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling are not usable at all.

But on the bright side, it is vanilla Android 12 experience on the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9! You can enjoy the revamped UI and the new Privacy Dashboard, and try out the fancy new widgets. And you can do all that now, provided you have the Exynos-powered global or Korean variants. Notably, the Snapdragon models of the Galaxy S9/Note 9 are not compatible with this release.

Many would agree that an Android 12 custom ROM is not exactly something one would recommend using as a daily driver in its current state. That, however, does not take away from the fact that this is the only way you can enjoy the sweetest Android dessert right now on the Samsung flagships of 2018.

Download ArrowOS 12 based on Android 12: Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus || Samsung Galaxy Note 9